How Good Is FSA's Management?

Federal Computer Weekly has a piece on a GAO report which analyzed why seven big IT projects were successful. 

• The most common factor was the involvement of program officials, particularly in ensuring the participation of internal and external stakeholders. 
• The next most factor was the knowledge and skills of the program officials and the support of senior management.

Are FSA Employees Federal?

That was my question when I saw this Post item, reporting OPM will survey all federal employees to assess their job satisfaction.  Now for some purposes county FSA employees who aren't farm loan officers are considered federal, for some purposes not.  I'd hope OPM includes them in this survey, but my guess in the normal course of events they won't.

Being Flexible: Chinese Versus US Versions

The NY Times had a long article on why Apple manufactures in China, focusing on Steve Jobs demand for the iPhone to have a glass screen rather than plastic.

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Meanwhile, Google Operating System has a post on how the Gmail logo was designed, including this quote from a book:

Dennis Hwang spent the day before the launch coming up with ideas for a logo and trying to make it work in conjunction with the clown-colored Google brand. (...) Even after four years at Google, I found it astounding that one twenty-something guy was sitting alone at his desk, sipping tea and developing the main branding element for a product to be used by millions of people - the night before it was scheduled to launch.

This fits our long-time image: China excels in throwing masses at a project; America is the home of the individual doer.

Kahneman and Dog Whistles

Finished reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow recently.  Also, there was discussion on blogs I follow about whether Gingrich was using  "dog-whistle" language in calling Obama a "food stamp president".

Kahneman's fast thinking is his System 1, which occurs unconsciously as we assess our environment on a second to second basis.  It is very capable, but sometimes faulty.  System 2 is essentially rational, conscious thought, which we hate to do and takes will power and energy.

An example is the famous optical illusions where two straight lines of equal length are displayed simultaneously, but one looks like this >----< and the other like this <----> .  When they're one above the other, the second looks shorter than the first.  That's the assessment of System 1.  Anyone who has encountered the illusion is capable of pulling from memory the fact that it is an illusion, and the lines are of equal length--that's System 2.

I'm thinking similar effects operate with political language.  Some language creates knee jerk reactions with the partisans, it's been devalued.  Things like "welfare queens", "socialist", "redneck", "Bible-thumper" all work that way.

Wash Day

Boston 1775 provides part of a poem on wash day in 18th century Boston:

It’s an evocative slice of life, showing a moment when laundry day meant all the women in a household were busy and little girls weren’t allowed jelly or butter, yet science was about to let people fly:

Syrian USDA Office to Close

Chris Clayton takes a sardonic approach to the pols, and NASCOE, resisting Vilsack's proposed closure of USDA offices.

See this for NASCOE's position,including a thrust at NRCS (all agencies in a county should be evaluated when talking office closures).

Conflict in the New Farm Bill

One problem the food movement will face in the new farm bill is the choice between trying to expand the supply of good food (i.e., local and organic) and the present.  The more you do that, the lower the prices will be and the harder it will be for existing producers to continue with their current size and business model.  In other words, expand the supply and you encourage the growth of "corporate" and "industrial" organic/local agriculture.

Just a thought.

Mobile Offices for USDA?

Back in the mid-90's, when the Service Center project was under Greg Carnill, one of the proposals coming from RD was to have mobile offices.  That was seen as a way to reach out to underserved areas (I think especially heavily Latino areas and reservations where language might be a problem). I thought of that when I saw this piece on VA's mobile Vetcenters.

John W. Boyd's Loan Specialist

John Boyd is prominently associated with the Pigford lawsuit.  I just happened to notice there's a vacancy in Mecklenburg county for a supervisory farm loan specialist.  I also found it interesting that the town is Boydton.

Lexis-Nexis Is a Government Innovation

Who would have thought it?  That was my reaction when I read this obit in the Post. Three paragraphs:

Mr. Rubin was a corporate lawyer in New York during the late 1960s when he was asked to give his advice on a new computerized legal research system.

The digital database had begun as a project to catalogue Ohio state laws using Air Force technology [emphasis added] that tracked intelligence reports. Mr. Rubin quickly saw the system’s commercial potential because of its ability to make millions of legal documents easily and quickly available to law firms.

The key was to ensure that the database was simple to use, Mr. Rubin said, because “lawyers can’t type, and only 15 percent can spell.”

 Of course, I enjoyed the last paragraph as well.